About

The Fatawa-yi Alamgiri (henceforth FA) is one of the most comprehensive works of Islamic jurisprudence ever produced. Compiled in India in the late seventeenth century by a huge team of Islamic jurists and sponsored by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir, this text travelled far and wide, with manuscript copies reaching Ottoman libraries within a few years of its completion. In the early period of British rule in India, that is, in the late eighteenth century, the FA was identified by the colonial British jurists as a key source of Islamic law, and hence the subject of (incomplete) translation and interpretation efforts, among others, by the Orientalist scholar William Jones. Thus, the FA, which covers all areas of Islamic law, from prayer and charity to contracts and criminal law, is both a notable contribution to Islamic legal thought, and a valuable source of historical information on early modern South Asia.

Despite its intellectual and historical significance, and its importance to members of the Muslim faith community, the FA has never been translated to English. Nor are there any published critical editions in any language. There are two print and one digital Arabic editions, and full and partial manuscript translations to Persian, English, Urdu and Bengali. The text of one of the Arabic editions is available for reuse on the https://shamela.ws website. Using these prior works and further research, the FA project will produce a bi-lingual (Arabic and English) digital edition of the FA, with detailed annotations explaining the meanings and usages of key legal terms, identifying the Islamic legal authorities cited, pointing to historical contexts of the application of such legal principles, and the contemporary relevance of specific legal discussions.

The investigators of this project hope that the website and database will be of use not only to scholars and students of Islamic law and South Asia, but also to members of the faith community worldwide and to all those who wish to learn about Islam.